Biography of Celeo Arias
He was born in Goascorán in 1835; he graduated as a lawyer in 1858. he Son of the former Head of State Juan Ángel Arias (1829-1830). He was Provisional President from May 1872 to January 1874. According to William S. Stokes, «a serious attempt was made by Céleo Arias from 1870 to 1890 to unite the disorganized factions of the self-determined Reds or Liberals into a compact political party. and disciplined.
Well-educated, highly intelligent, and seasoned in political practice, Arias was uniquely gifted for this purpose. In 1887 he published a pamphlet entitled My Ideas, a collection of ideas of the rights of man proclaimed by the French Revolution and of the Anglo-American doctrines of representative government, which Arias proclaimed as the philosophy and program of the Liberal Party. . . He constituted himself the recognized leader of the Liberal Party but allowed his name rather than his program to symbolize the organization.
This is true when he was president in 1872 and in 1879, 1883 and 1885, when he was a member of Congress. This characterized his struggle to promote the presidency of Dr. Marco Aurelio Soto and was part of his campaign to form the Liberal League in 1884.
Unconsciously, Arias sabotaged his own work, and instead of creating a party merely constituted himself a glorified party leader. This was proven. . . in the writing of the Constitution of 1880 when personalities, rather than ideas, dominated the debates. However, the declaration of principles and objectives of the Liberal Party made by Arias was a contribution and this justifies his title of Father of the Liberal Party of Honduras. «
For Guillén Zelaya, “statesman and philosopher was the first in Honduras who reduced to a system the liberal ideas that roamed without roots in the national environment, he was like the father of liberalism. Legislator, established in 1865 by means of a private vote in which the writer and the thinker is revealed, his absolute respect for human life, proposing the following article: «The death penalty is absolutely abolished» Ruler, was honest, magnanimous and faithful slave of your ideas. Vision, courage, wisdom, character, probity, talent, everything came together in that exalted soul ”. El Pueblo 28, May, 1931, p. 1.
